It is known that automotive door panels may be made by an injection molding process. Safety standards may require that the automotive door panels be weakened in one or more areas so as to cause a selective collapse of the automotive door panel at the weakened areas, thereby allowing an automobile, including the automotive door panel, to achieve a certain safety rating. To this end, grooves may be incorporated into the automotive door panel to weaken the door in the desired area or areas of the door panel. The use of these grooves in the automotive door panel may be necessary to improve the impact safety rating of the automobile. The locations for the weakened areas set by the safety standards may be continually changing. Accordingly, for an automobile to achieve certain safety ratings, modification to the injection mold apparatus used to form an injection molded plastic door panel may be necessary.
Injection molded plastic door panels formed using a conventional injection mold apparatus, in which at least one of the faces of the injection mold apparatus has permanently protruding projections that are used to form grooves in a portion of the molded article, may be disadvantageous. In particular, conventional injection molded parts with molded-in grooves may show blemishes on the show surface of the molded article (e.g., part) that may be unacceptable to customers. It is believed that such blemishes may be due to the flow of molten material around the permanently protruding projections. As a result of the resulting blemishes, painting or other secondary processes may be required to cover and/or mask the blemishes. Among other drawbacks, the use of painting or other secondary processes adds cost to the manufacturing process. In particular, painting the parts may add a tremendous cost to manufacturing plants. Spray booths and ducting must be purchased, as well as incinerating systems, depending upon the governmental emissions requirements.
Previous attempts to incorporate grooves into the automotive door panel without requiring painting and/or masking have been to mold parts without grooves and then to form (e.g., cut) grooves into the parts using a cutting tool, such as, for example, a robotic cutting tool. The use of a robotic cutting tool may also be disadvantageous because it too adds cost to the manufacturing process and may also produce concerns with the accuracy and repeatability of the machined grooves. The robotic cutting tool may require a cell with a robot, holding fixtures, cutting tools, and guarding. The parts must be hand loaded into a cell and clamped in place prior to forming (e.g., cutting) the grooves, thereby requiring additional manufacturing and also increasing labor costs.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a mold insert system and/or an injection mold apparatus including a mold insert system configured to imprint grooves into the surface of a molded article that minimizes and/or eliminates these deficiencies in the prior art.